Zoominoes news & patch notes

Hi all, today we’re excited to push what will likely be our final zoominoes demo patch before launch, which is coming 7/30! We have a large game board update including a snack limit, a bunch of new content, and more.

Game Board Update and Snack Limit

The biggest change here is that we are adding a snack limit of 10 snacks. This will both make the game board look nicer and clearer and also encourage players to use their snacks early and often as opposed to hoarding them. 

We’ve also made a number of other changes:

• Vertical bar instead of horizontal.

• Bar uses special event icon as ticker during special events.

• Trash on giftshop and pick one screen to get rid of excess snacks.

• Zookeeper, gold, and rank UI improved.

• Calendar button will preview the next boss on the tooltip.

• Calendar screen: Each day on the calendar now previews the score goal for the day.

• Hand of tiles now overlaps a bit to look more like a card hand.

• Snacks are now larger on drag for better readability

• Hand buffs now trigger larger and above your hand tiles

• New VFX for negative points on hand tiles.

Score Goal Balance Changes

We are changing our goals to make things a little easier early on and a little harder later on. This change is based on our experiences and feedback that players were losing two often on early levels at high difficulties. We’d love to hear how this change feels both at high and low difficulties.

New Content:

• Earthquake Day and Masquerade Day special events.

• Removed "fill row" stuff and added a "summon animal" theme. 

• New mythics Naga, Titan, Chimera, and new ability for Bigfoot!

• Booster packs now get rarer animals, but don't offer snacks. 

• Animal changes to make types (land/sea/sky) balanced.

• New Souvenirs (Summoning Flute, Snacked Deck, and Geode)

• and more! 

Misc Updates:

• Daily Challenge button has a check mark when you've already played it.

• Animation speed can be changed in options.

• Visual updates to all menus.

• Large text update to make things more consistent and clear.

• Extra animations on profile/options etc.

• Achievements in collection visual update for better readability.

• Mouse over zoom positioning improved and size increased.

• Profile visual polish update, as well as added playtime stat.

• Updated animal fun facts.

• Zookeeper dialogue, fun facts, and unique calendar sticky notes added.

Bug Fixes:

• Unicorn Horn triggered VFX only plays when used.

• Coupon Clippers will now always give an immediate sale.

• Moves no longer block summons.

• Suckerfish dynamic text works better with an empty deck.

• Gem tooltips are clearer in collection.

• Tons of text fixes.

• Imp ability should now work after it receives other buffs.

• Ant Invasion no longer has a higher goal.

• An animal's score being multiplied should now count as gaining points.

• Crocodile no longer eats itself on bounce day.

• Copying Cherufe's ability will now double the 10x. 

• Cherufe’s 10x ability will apply after souvenirs that give animals points

• Guardian Angel now actually saves you.

• Magic 8 Ball now correctly tells you the plays until it triggers.

• Jacana now works with rainbow animals.

• Deer now correctly strong hints.

• Tanuki will now correctly have its ability trigger when it's the first animal played for the day.

• Fixed Tanuki not working correctly with some of our animals.

• Fixed Phoenix not being summoned during Sci-Fi Fair day.

• Fixed Rainbow animals not counting towards Lava Lamps effect.

Launch Incoming!

Hi all, before I jump into patch notes I wanted to share some exciting news. This will be one of our last patches before Zoominoes launches, as I’m pleased to announce we’re launching this summer! 

With launch you’ll see:

• Tons of new zookeepers (about 15)

• Challenges game mode

• Updated gameboard

• Achievements 

• New animals, souvenirs, snacks, boss levels etc. 

• Zookeeper voices and dialogue

• Difficulty updates

• Visual polish 

• General balance updates

• General bug fixes

Colorblind Mode and Glyphs

We now support colorblind mode. If you check it in settings, you will see unique symbols for each color. We’ve also added glyphs (Symbol Icons) in textboxes. The colored symbols will show up when colorblind mode is on and the rest are always active. This was a pretty major text change, so if you run into any bugs please let us know in discord.

Daily Challenge Visual Update

Daily Challenge also got some polish. The timer is now visible both on the landing page and in the mode itself. There’s also a check mark if you’ve already completed daily challenge. The Zookeeper you are playing as also shows the same information as Zookeeper Select.

Misc. Changes

• New animals: World Turtle, Tanuki, Titan, Kitsune, Ouroboros, Chimera, Kakapao, Star Tortoise, Artic Fox

• New Snacks: Mirror Snack, Sharing Snack

• New Souvenirs: Geode, Gem Polishing Kit, God Pack

• Bosses will now take effect after loading so players can more clearly see what they do. 

• Players can now minimize screens that cover the board to see it. This includes gold rewards, Pick one, Gift shop, and victory/defeat screens.

• Mouse over zoom is now has larger text, darker titles, larger icons, and has better positioning (still wip) 

• Large numbers will use scientific notation anywhere they can show up. 

• Calendar Visual Update: New background art, swapped icon colors on both calendar and collection.

Bug Fixes

• Daily Challenge high score challenge will no longer jump you to day 56.

• Completing the Daily Challenge will send you back to the leaderboard.

• Fixed issues with Phoenix not summoning at the start of the round.

• When dragging a snack you have multiple copies of, only one will drag. 

• Lyrebird no longer carries over between days. 

Zookeeper Select Visual Update

We’ve updated zookeeper select visually to focus on one zookeeper at a time. This will make zookeeper textboxes more readable and should also generally look nicer. You can now preview each keepers starting deck before entering a new run. In the future we plan to add unique lanyards per keeper for some extra visual flair. 

New Stuff!

• Berries (Give an animal of color x +10 permanently)

• Appetizer (create an extra starting space)

• Imp (Mythic animal that gains points of animals smaller than it)

Misc. Changes

• We’ve temporarily removed Masquerade Ball. We like the idea of this event, but need to find a tweak we’re happy with to make it play well. 

• Overtime (AKA endless mode) should now finish at day 56.

• We’ve added back filters to deck view in addition to the newer sorts.

• Daily challenges now won’t count for either leaderboard if they go past midnight.

• Animals can only be bounced once per day to prevent infinite loops.

• Caterpillar now requires 15 points. 

• High score challenge goal should now be infinity.

• Pteradactyl should now copy Lion (and similar effects) to care about land neighbors instead of sky.

• Pteradactyl no longer retains abilities after being bounced

• Max 5 unlocks will be shown after a run.

Bug Fixes

• Deck view no longer shows copies of animals during pick 3 and gift shop. 

• Time Capsule no longer doubles negative points (Pancakes bugs)

• Vogelkop now works when you transform into it.

• Gems now show numbers correctly.

• Fractional/decimal points should no longer show up anywhere in game. 

• The default zookeeper no longer shows up when loading first level.

• Souvenirs should no longer visually trigger when they aren’t doing anything.

• Soda’s should no longer be able to transform into the same animal you just used a Soda on

• On Special Event days, animals can no longer bounce into blocked off zones and special tile can no longer randomly be placed in those zones

• Victory Music should now correctly play win or lose in Overtime

• On Special Event days, Swift should no longer override starting spaces

• Quitting out during a daily challenge should no longer "desync" your save in such a way that you can count a previous day's daily as today's

Bigger Numbers!

Our max int is no longer 9,200 quadrillion. We have switched from longs to doubles, meaning our new max int is approximately 1.8 × 10^308. Please let us know in discord if you run into any bugs with this. Also note we haven’t yet updated the target scores. That will come in our next update. 

Common/Uncommon Pass

We’ve heard your feedback that commons and sometimes uncommons are unappealing to draft. As a result, we are moving starter cards with abilities like Monkey to starter rarity, and buffing a number of commons and uncommons. 

Gift Shop updates 

• Clearer separation between snacks and souvenirs

• Unique backer for Mythics and all rarities

• Updated visuals for all elements of shop. 

• You can now click to buy from shop instead of having to click the buy button. 

Deck View Updates

• Deck view now sorts instead of filtering 

• Deck view now shows accurate points for all animals

• Deck name updated to “username’s deck”

Overtime Updates

• Endless mode is now called “Overtime”

• Overtime is exactly one month, ending on day 56

• Overtime has unique music

• Day 56 is always a high score challenge

New Events

• Masquerade Ball

• Simon Says

• Snake Day

Miscellaneous

• Board buffs now have placement vfx

• Settings now contains a wishlist button

• Animal SFX now plays on transform

• Animal SFX now plays on pick 3

• Collected and not collected things are now separated for locked sort

• Negative numbers now show in red

• Ghost Pepper has SFX

• Zookeeper times played and wins should now be accurate

• You can now continue daily challenge separately from your normal saved game.

• UI now collapses to show redraw/give up button when you have lots of souvenirs. 

• Special Events now have special visuals. 

Bugs

• A thin black line no longer appears on animals for some players during pick 3

• Animals can’t be bounced more than once in the same round. This eliminates infinite loops involving Kangaroo and Flamingo. 

• Fixed the issue that caused weird three word names to show up in daily challenge leaderboard

• Bald Eagle no longer has strong hinting

• Difficulty unlock stingers now show the correct image

• Vogelkop now works when it’s hit off a Sky Soda.

• Time Capsule no longer doubles point reductions causing 0 point animals with Pancakes. 

Hi all, we're putting out a patch to keep you entertained for the holidays! In addition to a ton of bug fixes, this patch has a focus on updates to daily challenge, as well as some UI improvements and a bit of new content. Here's a breakdown:

Daily Challenge Updates

• Only your first run will count for the daily challenge leaderboard

• Seed is hidden until after your first run

• Instead of going into endless, there will be a special event on day 28 where you try and score as many points as possible. You will go until you hit 0 plays regardless of score.

New Stuff

• Unique transitions for each week

• Collection visual updates (more coming next patch)

• Collection visible from settings while playing. 

• New sfx in options menu

• Long mouse over zoom for difficulties.

• New board space vfx

• New event: Construction day

• New event: Capture the Flag

• Endless mode now has shops and events

• More zookeeper text lines.

• Starter animal change to Terra (Ferret instead of Monkey).

• Locked shop visuals

• New design: Walrus

• Deck view mouseover gives deck stats

Bug Fixes

• Booster pack + Bigfoot no longer crashes

• Tutorial popups as you win no longer cause crashes

• Armadillo + Matching Outfit no longer crashes

• Daily Challenge can no longer pick test hero

• Animals will no longer show numbers lower than their base score with things like Night Owl.

• Phoenix now works correctly with end of round effects when it wins a round.

• Peacock now unlocks correctly after beating event.

• Orca no longer works with starting slots.

• Armadillo with 0 cards in hand no longer crashes.

• Suckerfish no longer crashes with an empty deck.

Known Issues (will be addressed in the future)

• Kangaroo + Pteradactyl can still create an infinite loop.

• Board buffs sometimes linger between runs if you click play again. 

We hope you have a great holiday and enjoy the patch. Please share feedback on everything zoominoes in our discord.

Hi everyone, today I’m excited to share our patch coming out just before Animal Fest which starts today! This patch has a number of new features, as well as some awesome visual updates. Let’s break them down.

Achievements

Achievements are in! You should see them in both collection and on steam. As a note, there may be some wonkiness with these for achievements you’ve hit before they were enabled. One other note, like collections, these will be reset on launch. 

Daily Challenge

Another feature we’ve added is the daily challenge. Each day a new seeded run will be available for everyone to play. Your zookeeper and difficulty (director) will be pre-selected. You can take any number of attempts at each day’s run. There will be a leaderboard for players who make it the farthest and score the most points. Note that the visuals on this are work in progress. I’ll see you on the leaderboard!

Scoring Visual Update

We’ve changed how our scoring works visually. Animals should show more clearly when they are gaining or losing points with “+3” type stuff. This should help both with visual clarity, and make things feel a little crazier when you put together awesome combos! We also have your score tick up more clearly. This is all still work in progress, but we are really excited about this direction!

Multiple Profiles

We’ve added support for multiple user profiles. Your collection progress, difficulty unlocks, and achievements will be tracked separately for each profile. Note that the visuals on this are work in progress. 

Other updates

• New animals and souvenirs

• New gain snack animation

• New gain souvenir animation

• New gain play animation

• New music for different weeks

• Variety of new sfx

• Bigfoot has a new design

• Tadpole has a new design

• Board buffs should have better logic for what’s permanent/temporary and no longer stack on top of each other (eg. starting space with +3)

• New Events:

  • Trap Day

  • Type Day

  • Treasure Day

Art Updates

• New Mythic Animal Art : Cherufe, Quetzalcoatl, and Carbuncle (edit to Kraken to reflect dye ability) + WIP Sabertooth Art

• New Animal Art: Dragonfly and Lynx

• New Souvenirs Art : Magic Wand, Golden Running Shoes, Blackberry Snowcone Machine

• New VFX: Siren, Charybdis, Electric Eel, and Guardian Angel

• Environment particle VFX on Week 1 and 4

• New Tile VFX: Lava, Mirror, and Treasure Tiles

• Smaller Feedback, Wishlist, and Steam buttons

Bug Fixes

• Cursed Trinket now gives Mythical Animals as rewards

• Sugar Glider should now be properly playing the bottom animal of your deck

• Snack highlight is now in the right spot on tutorial. 

Zookeeper Testing

We’d love your help testing new zookeepers. If you’re interested, please join the discord for more info coming soon. 

Thank you so much for playing zoominoes! We put a ton of stuff in this patch and a lot of it is still work in progress, so your feedback is crucial in making sure we get everything as good as it can possibly be.

Welcome to the Zoominoes September patch! This patch is a bit of a monster as we’ve been working on it for a few months now. Let’s jump in and see what’s new.

Crash Fixes

We think and hope we’ve solved many of the issues players have had where they couldn’t really start the game without getting into a crash. For those who have run into these issues, please let us know via discord, X, or the in-game form if this build fixed your issue.

Board Updates

We’ve made major updates to our game board. As always, your feedback will help us determine which of these changes are working and which need more work. Here’s a quick list of some of these changes:

• Larger souvenirs

• Souvenir triggered effects update

• Souvenir tab in/out when you have a lot of them. 

• New gold icon location/size

• Difficulty badge on playmat

• Score Bar that grows with your points

• Fly text moved above animal art

• Playmat click effects

• Top level points for souvenirs

Gold Rewards Screen

We added a gold rewards screen at the end of each day. We also added a $3 bonus at the end of each week to put a little more cash in player’s pockets.

Other New Features

• Mouse over zoom improvements

  • Rarity

  • Color in text

• Weekly stinger

• Move animation

• Many new sounds including scoring

• Animation speedup when lots of actions firing

New Content

• Tasty Coin

• Gem Collection

• Color buffers (8 different sky animals)

• Fennec

• Rhino

• Megalodon

• Barreleye

• Condor

• Pelican

• Beehive

• Mining Kit

• Sunshine

• Mole

• Golden Idol

• Double Trouble

• Large Snack Mix

• Time Capsule

• Matching Outfit

• Lyrebird

• Serpent

• Vogelkop

• And more

Changed Content

• Garuda

• Shark

• Tadpole

• Travel Journal

• Rewards Card

• Caterpillar

• Crocodile

• Ferret

• Hyena

• Cherufe

• Dragon

• Harpy

• King Kong

• Naga

• Phoenix

• Qilin

• Sloth

• Unicorn

• Mammoth

• Kangaroo

• Frog

• Crab

• Gopher

• Leopard Seal

• Cleaner Fish

• Remora

• Djinn

• And more

Deleted Content

• Bigfoot

• Bonobo

• Chimpanzee

• Racccoon

• Snail

• Captains Wheel

• Four Leaf Clover

• Triple Threat

• And more 

Bug Fixes

• Disabled state for shop clearer

• Roll button visually disables when can’t afford

• Ant Invasion Ants now have different art

• Lots of wording updates for clarity/consistency

• Cleaned up Mouse Over Zoom during pick one

• Fix crash issue lots of players are having

• Unicorn Horn with no rainbows no longer crashes

• And many more

We are releasing an update to our Steam Next Fest Patch! In addition to some bug fixes, this patch also has a few exciting updates:

Weekly Game Board Updates:

Each week, you'll see a unique game board. Day 1-7 is the standard forest board, Day 8-14 is a water themed board and so on. This was in the patch a week ago, but wasn't mentioned. These have all been updated with improved visuals.

Language Support

We've added support for a ton of languages. We have:

• French

• Italian

• German

• Spanish

• Portugese

• Korean

• Chinese

• Japanese

• Russian

I also wanted to make a small note on our unlock feature I mentioned in the last patch. We will likely reset unlocks for full launch.

I hope everyone loves the Next Fest Build. Until next time, may you hit day 28 and have a blast playing Zoominoes!

Matt Nass demoing Zoominoes for Steam Next Fest.

Matt Nass streaming roguelike deckbuilder Zoominoes for the Steam Next Fest

Unlocks

• We have turned unlocks on for a number of cards.
• Currently all unlocks are triggered by beating different special events, but we’ll have way more triggers in the future.

Tutorial

Music and Sound Updates

• We have new music and sounds in!
• Landing, gameplay, and special events each have different music.
• Almost every animal has unique sfx, and many UI elements have sfx as well.
• Everything in is still work in progress and will continue to evolve as we push towards launch. Let us know which sounds you like, and which ones you don’t!

Concepting Pass

Zookeeper Updates

• We swapped around starting cards for zookeepers and made some changes to help balance things and improve flavor fits.
• Cardi and Speedy are taking a break for Next Fest. They will return in a future update.

Biome Variety

Misc. Updates

• Added VFX for summoning “tokens”.
• Updated Zoominoes logo.
• Grey out items in shop you can’t afford.
• Tons of new animals, souvenirs, special events, snacks etc.
• And more!

Bug Fixes

• Locked shops no longer persist between rounds.
• Redraw no longer pops up until you’re done drawing.
• Fixed issues with Calorie Counter wrong point value.
• Fixed crashes with mirror space and chimera (and others).
• Fixed issues with Hummingbird (now Stork) copying wrong animal.
• And more!

New Feature: Seeded Runs

Card Changes

• Busy Bee -> uncommon 6 cost
• Gems now scale as you collect more of them. It will go +1/+3/+6/+10 etc.
• Dragon moved from +5 per treasure to +10.
• And more!

New Content

• Added new zookeeper Speedy
• Added new zookeeper Cardi
• Harpy (puts sky animals on top when played on bottom)
• Incense for all 3 types (increases shop odds)
• Play space (snack that creates a +1 play space on the board)
• 100 pounder (+100 point snack)
• Added chimpanzee (double the points of land animals in your hand with my color).
• Added Carabao (
• Added Honey (Snack that surrounds the target spot with Ants.
• Face Paint Day (Event that turns all your animals random colors)
• Black Snowcone (Turn an animal black and give it +5 points)
• Horse (if you have land sea and sky in hand, they each get +5 perm)
• Rower (When you complete a row, +5 points, then double this ability.)
• Vulture (get a random snack)
• Passport (When you play an animal in a corner, give it +2 points and permanently increase this bonus by 2.)
• Mystery Snack Box (2 random snacks)
• Ant Queen (75 pointer comes with 2 ants)
• Black Widow (20 point uncommon but it’s black)
• Meerkat (when I eat a snack feed it to another animal as well)
• Panther (20 points, score again for each neighboring black animal)
• Golden Goose (mythic version of old Ostrich, gains gold equal to points scored)
• Squid (now permanently turn all neighbors black, and give them +5.)
• And more!

VFX

• Added add tile to deck animation
• Added snowcone animation
• Added transform (soda) animation
• Plays remaining go down as gold goes up
• Mythic animal play animation

Misc Updates

• A number of templating updates are in. For example, we’re using $5 for gold gains instead of calling out gold. Please let us know if anything feels confusing or off in some way.
• Added lock option to shop.
• Added animal facts to the collection. These are a bit placeholder for now (I googled them), but feedback is appreciated.
• Polished a number of in game art pieces. Also new art for snacks, souvenirs, and animals.
• Shop now greys out buy button for things you can’t afford.
• Dynamic text is in for souvenirs that need updating over time. If anything else could use dynamic text, let us know and we’ll get it added!

Bug Fixes

• Hummingbird now works with buffs.
• Low play count VFX now stop when round is done.
• Dance party no longer crashes with no cards in deck.
• Sci-Fi Fair starting spaces should be clearer.
• Rolly-Polly and Employee Discount Card should now update immediately.
• And more!

Game Changes

• Rolling now costs 2/4/6... instead of 1/2/3....
• Souvenirs per rarity cost 3/6/9 instead of 2/4/6.
• Endless mode point targets scale much faster
• Ostritch removed.
• Sodas moved to uncommon.
• Endless mode will give card rewards (but still no gift shops).
• Half plays special event will round up.
• Gems (+1 souvenir for each color/type) cost moved from 3 to 2.
• Ant Invasion down to 2 ants.

Bug Fixes

• Endless Mode should no longer cause crashes
• Score goals should no longer show negative numbers when it gets really large.
• Groundhogs Day no longer takes you back to the shop immediately.
• Puzzle Box and Coin Collection now work with rainbow animals.
• Surround Sound should work as expected.

Stat Reset